


Phantom Pain

by Harukami



Category: Fatal Frame - Fandom, Zero | Project Zero | Fatal Frame Series, Zero: Shisei no Koe | Fatal Frame III: The Tormented
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3803980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the end of Fatal Frame 3, things are a mess. But Miku and Rei have things to discuss and experiences they've shared and, after all, they're still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantom Pain

Waking up is a mess.

Rei wakes up covered in her own tears and snot, sobbing as she jolts upright and buries her face in her hands. For a while that's all she can do, and then when she mostly has it under control, she reminds herself she's alive. She reminds herself she's not alone.

She thinks of Miku, scrambles up and, still in her negligee, runs to the door, around the corner, to Miku's door. She doesn't knock. She could, but can't bring herself to. She needs to see. She throws the door open, sees Miku sitting up, tear-stained, and makes a sound even she can't interpret in her own lungs.

"Rei," Miku says, and Rei goes over to her, sinks down slowly, pulls Miku into her arms.

Once they've recovered a little, they go downstairs. Rei's still not dressed, but she doesn't have any room for shame yet. Either Kei is asleep, or perhaps reduced to ash, or he won't care either. She'd walked around in front of him like this before, when she was too depressed to care whether or not it was appropriate. Miku is still wearing her pajamas too. That's the type of moment it is.

Kei is awake, he is alive, and he's on the phone next to the stairs, nodding into it, talking rapidly. He hangs up at about the time they get downstairs, and he looks at Rei and, with a voice rusty with disuse, says, "Mio-chan's awake."

"Oh," Rei says, and then Kei sees Miku, who he'd only seen asleep before, and rushes over, takes her hands.

"I'm so glad," he says, and Miku gives him a weird awkward smile.

It's a mess. They're all a mess, Rei thinks, but right then she can't care. She's been juggling 'I can't care' and 'I care too much' about everything for so long, and although she doesn't care now, it feels different. It's elated and grief-stricken, rather than empty and ashamed.

A mess, she thinks again.

***

They dress and take the train out to the hospital Amakura Mio is in. Rei wonders if they'll be out of place, but Kei doesn't want to be alone, and Miku and she don't want to leave each other alone, so they go regardless. She and Miku hover awkwardly in the doorway as Kei takes Mio's hands, as Mio stares down at them numbly, with tears in her eyes.

"I understand what you've been through," Kei says gravely. "I saw you in there."

"I saw you too," Mio says, her voice nearly a whisper. "But I couldn't stop."

"There are some people you need to follow," Kei says, and beside her, Rei feels Miku flinch. "If you think there's any chance, right?"

Mio's tears well over and she, too, is a mess of tears. 

Later, Kei will introduce her properly to both Miku and Rei. Rei will, later, explain how she saw the manor of sleep through the others' eyes, how she saw Mio's suffering through Kei's, and apologize for it. Later still, they will become something like friends, people bound together by a similar fate, a similar sense of loss.

For now, though, she and Miku hover awkwardly in the doorway, blocking traffic in, while Mio folds both hands around her throat as if it is hoarse and screams her sobs out.

***

That night, they stay in a hotel. Kei has his own house nearby and offers to let them stay, but they decline.

"I thought I'd never want to sleep again," Miku says, sitting on the edge of her narrow hotel bed and staring out the window. "But despite everything, I'm tired."

"We've had a long..." Rei trails off. She can't remember how long it's been. She's not sure what day it is any more. She went back and forth between waking and sleeping like a zombie, unaware of time passing, just knowing she had to get back to sleep to find answers, to find the truth, to find Miku in there and Kei. To find Yuu. "It's been exhausting," she says.

"Yes," Miku says. She looks up at Rei. "I'm a little scared of sleeping," she says.

"Me too," Rei says.

Despite that, they go to their own beds, and lie there in the darkness, Miku with the blankets pulled up to her chin and Rei on top of them, feeling sweaty and uncertain, heart pounding.

Despite that, they fall asleep.

Rei wakes in the morning a little refreshed. No pain travels across her skin, and she doesn't have any sense that her dreams had any significance. She's sure she did dream -- people do, after all -- but she doesn't remember anything. As soon as she's awake, they slip away.

Miku is still asleep. Her heart skips, and she thinks, helplessly, _I don't want to lose you again_ , but she forces herself to remain calm. She gets up, comes over, sits on the bed next to Miku, touches her shoulder.

"Miku?"

A sharp, indrawn breath, and Miku opens her eyes. "Rei," she says, almost confused, and Rei exhales heavily.

***

They go back to the house, just the two of them, the house that they used to share with Yuu, the house that started to fall into darkness around them as they dragged monstrosities back, carried on the ink hiding under Rei's skin, on the nostalgia and memory of ropes under Miku's. Rei wonders if the house is truly free now or if they will continue to find aberrations in the coming nights. Cups rattling, photos falling off walls, limbs disappearing around corners where they shouldn't be. The rift was closed, but that didn't mean everything was gone, did it? Miku's past, Mio's past, both told her enough she needed to know about spirits in the real world.

Still, it's their home. She goes in, and realizes how dirty it's become. Of course it has, she thinks to herself. Miku did all the cleaning during the time that Rei lacked entirely in direction, that Rei was subsumed by grief over losing Yuu. Miku tidied the counters and separated the garbage and took it out, Miku cleaned inside closets and organized folders and picked up the things Rei would leave behind in the living room. But Miku was unconscious for days, and even tired and lacking a desire to, Rei had continued to eat during the days. She'd had a guest to think of when Kei had come, too. The kitchen is covered with takeout containers.

"Ah," Rei says, and without another word, starts to clean.

"Rei, I can --"

"It's fine," Rei says. "I need something to do anyway."

"Okay," Miku says.

***

That night, Rei refuses to explore the house. She leaves her professional camera where it belongs, and keeps her eyes straight in front of herself as she turns the TV off, goes up the stairs, and changes for bed. Sitting on the bed after, she feels uneasy. The hotel was one thing, but this bed has been a portal for her for so many days now, for countless days. Even with the rift closed--

She gets up, goes to Miku's room, knocks on the door, enters.

"Rei," Miku says. She's looking uneasily at a doll on her dresser, but turns away as Rei enters, one hand clasped to her chest. "Can't sleep? You can sleep in here with me tonight if you want."

"Okay," Rei says.

It's not the first time. After Yuu's death, she'd spent a number of nights curled up next to Miku. The sense of a living body next to hers had filled the space that had initially been nightmares of a dead one. 

Miku smiles, a little unsteadily, and goes to the bed. Ruri is there; she looks up with a jangle of her collar, and Miku sits, pulls Ruri into her lap. "I'm afraid to sleep alone too, coming back here."

Rei nods.

"You saw, didn't you? You saw... that I chose to follow him. To follow Mafuyu."

"I saw," Rei says.

"My feelings for him, my brother, I--" Miku trails off, and buries her face in Ruri's fur. Ruri has started to purr quietly, though whether or not it's because of Miku's distress or Miku's petting, Rei couldn't say. 

"I know," Rei says. "You don't have to say it out loud."

She understands a little. There are things that become more real when verbalized, like how ghosts were when the camera focused on them. It had taken her a week to even describe Yuu as dead, and even then, she hadn't been able to write his friends to inform them. It's not quite the same thing, but there are still things that become more real when verbalized.

"He chose to stay with a ghost," Miku says. "With a spirit. I don't know if he'd even fallen in love with her then or if it was sympathy, kindness. But I think he had fallen in love. He couldn't bear to leave her behind, not if it meant that she'd suffer alone. He would rather suffer with her. I left. I've always wondered if I should have. If I shouldn't have made the same choice. Stayed with them. Out of love for him, sympathy for her. You ask yourself these things."

"'It should have been me instead,'" Rei says. "Or 'I should have gone with him.'"

"Sorry, Rei."

"It's fine." It isn't. But it is.

"In the end, I couldn't turn away from him. I needed to follow him. I was weak when I shouldn't be."

Rei sits next to her, takes the hand that isn't on Ruri. "I would have made the same choice if Yuu let me," she says. "It's not about strength. If he didn't force me to live, I would have died with him. He said that by living on a part of him will survive. I'm -- sure it's the same for Mafuyu. They're dead where they are; we can be alive where we are, and when our time comes--"

"I wonder if that's comforting," Miku says, and laughs wetly.

***

They sleep curled in each other's arms. Rei sleeps under the covers with Miku, and it's overly warm. But despite that, she sleeps deeply; she wakes once in the night, not because of a nightmare, not because of spirits, not because of forcing herself out of the manor's door, but because Ruri had decided to start walking on her chest and stomach, purring and kneading for no reason.

***

Rei wakes first again. Sunlight is filtering through the room at an angle she doesn't recognize, and she realizes, groggily, that she's in Miku's room from that before she quite wakes up enough to confirm it. She opens her eyes, sees Miku's face inches from hers. Miku is breathing in and out slowly; her breath gusts against Rei's face. If Rei inhales, she'll breathe Miku in.

She inhales. 

Miku wakes up, and for a moment Rei absurdly thinks it's related. It's something else, probably. She'd stiffened, the sound of her breathing changed, and the two of them were so close that the change likely woke her. But they stare at each other from inches away.

"Rei," Miku says.

Rei thinks about asking, but chickens out. She's always been the coward between the two of them, she thinks bitterly. Some of the old fog has settled around her senses again, just a little. "Good morning, Miku," she says again.

Miku blinks rapidly, draws a breath, lets it out. She's tensed up too. "Can I kiss you?" Miku asks.

Stunned, Rei's mouth opens. She doesn't know how to respond, finds her heart pounding and mind battering around the words like a bird caught in a room, struggling to get out the window. Even though she knows she'd thought it, she wonders if she said it aloud by accident -- she wonders if she led Miku to this, if Miku is again compensating for her, comforting her, taking care of the things she shouldn't have to--

"I'm sorry," Miku says all at once, cheeks going red. "I shouldn't -- it's so soon after everything and -- I mean, you have Yuu--"

"Yes," Rei says, and kisses her.

They kiss for a while, just that, hold each other and learn how their mouths fit together, how breath feels stuttered, drawn in, sucked between their bodies, grabbed in between their movements, their touches, their tentative lips exploring each other, and break the series of kisses only when Ruri abruptly jumps onto the bed, startling Miku, and lets out a yowl.

"Oh," Miku says, breathless. "She's hungry."

Rei stares at her, red-faced, stares at the cat's offended expression, and despite everything, finds herself giggling.

It's infectious. Miku starts laughing too a moment later, the sound bubbling up from somewhere inside her, spilling out, a light coming back into her eyes. Rei thinks her own expression must be similar. The sound dispels the fog around her, spilling out of her chest. She can't remember when she's laughed like this, and it grows between them, spirals out of control into absurdity as Ruri sits, tail lashing angrily, on their bodies.

Finally, they get themselves back under control. "Life goes on, I guess," Miku says, and gets out of bed, scooping Ruri up in her arms.

Rei sits up in Miku's bed. "Life goes on," she agrees.


End file.
